“Is the tech world ready for President Trump”

The Web Summit a technology conference that brought together academics and biggest buyers and sellers of technology to tackle urgent global issues. Lisbon is clamored with signs of the web summit, the Portuguese government has announced 200 million euro fund to attract the wealthy to secure its future as the next silicon success story.

"We want to do better, we want to do it faster, we want to go further and we know we have a lot to learn from you, said Antonio Costa President of Portugal at the opening night gala."

The Web summit a small technology conference that started in Ireland now has 53000 attendees from 167 countries, all looking to experience new emerging technologies.Paddy Cosgrave the founder of the Web Summit, attempted to connect to facebook and share the live stream of the opening night gala, unfortunately, due to a technical glitch, it did not work. However, despite the technical glitch, the energy of evoking change was very much electric.

The challenge of creating scaled up technological solutions to current global crises where governments have failed could be possible with a collaborative nexus between tech hubs and private sectors. However, the main concern from viewing the innovative apps and VR tech they were aimed at accelerating the lives of the already better off echelons of society. Therefore, can elaborative immersive experiences deliver meaningful change, currently the focus has been on consumer experiences, playing games and connecting with  friends which are not achieving economic productivity.

The zeitgeist and spirit in Lisbon declare that this city is open and ready for business, will it fall into the trappings of other silicon bubbles such as San Francisco and London is yet to be seen. Currently, it is feasible to live on a shoestring and develop a major start up. There may not be the same level of industry experts as Silicon Valley but it boasts an exciting scene for start-ups which is supported by monthly events. The main attraction for setting up in Lisbon is the social stability and much cheaper than other European cities such as Berlin and London.

The summit promised to offer engaging solutions to the most pressing issues; the economic uncertainty from US election results, the refugee's crisis and unemployment from development in AI (Artificial Intelligence) technologies.

"Jose Manuel Barroso the former Portuguese Prime Minister said: Europeans need to change the mentality to catch up with the United States."

However,  with nationalism and protectionism on the rise in the United States, another concern is how will President Trump engage with Silicon Valley a region that largely opposed his candidacy.  

I spoke to Justin Antonipillai Counselor to the Secretary, Delegated Duties of Under Secretary for Economic Affairs at US Dept. of Commerce about the serious concerns regarding President elects protectionist approach to the economy.

Justin Antonipillai discussed a coalition of data: US-EU open data launch. The U.S and EU officials first joint public data initiative across the continents to enhance identified data sets that are comparable. The social and economic potential of the ambitious project is to present a coalition of data to introduce a better understanding of existing datasets.

The focus of the open data project is to analyse and visualise the data to bring insights into the difference between what's going on in Europe and the United States in order for policymakers to assist growth through better statistics access.

I asked Justin Antonipillai about the real-time impact of open data projects on a community. Justin 

"So with this EU project let me give you an example. So imagine that you were trying to get an economic indicator information like housing starts you worried about whether there's going to be enough housing in the US and then you're again you might want to compare it to unemployment rates or employment rates. Historically you would have to go to get each year's housing starts one by one"

This initiative only solves part of the problem, data tools cannot alone deal with the issue of data sets being operative. Therefore, a connection needs to be made between the public and private sectors for actionable change. We are now living in a global supply chain our growth comes through innovation, the ideas that are crossing borders all the time could be in peril.

With TTIP in the balance and the UK’s Brexit decision, the question of integration and transparency is under threat, open data effecting change is a possibility.

The current course of  US has not experienced more than 3% GDP growth for 10 record straight years.

However, the future of open source could be called into question by the president-elect who views the international community as adversaries rather than partners. This protectionist view on open markets may cast doubt when demands a review, countries have to make sure that integrated global economy is shared not just by the wealthy, the question of political will decide the direction of growth. The biggest threat to the tech industry according to investors is labour laws and regulation.globalisation estimates that technology would create about 2 million jobs but would displace 7 million by 2020. This is a major concern for those already hard pressed, living in economies that are unstable, the tech community at the summit report by the World Economic ForumAwere aware of the concerns. The main consternation at the conference was the threat of AI displacing blue-collar workers, the threat is some time away according to

"Mike Schroepfer CTO of Facebook, he cautioned patience, stating the ability of machines to match human intelligence years away."

Hanson Robotics create humanoid robotics, at the summit they unveiled Sophia a robot tasked with a live interview with journalist Mike Butcher from TechCrunch. There wasn’t much talk from Sophia unfortunately, Sophia still requires assistance from her creator. It is clear that if you have aged 40+ and face unemployment, you will be left unskilled in a technologically developed workspace, the industry has not thought about how best the ageing workforce can be adapted to an excelled environment.

However, solutions to combat this issue were not abundant, a panellist asked the question “does the tech industry have an obligation to give back”. The response is the tech community has the opportunity to give back but the hardest part is making sure that it's embedded in the fabric of start-ups. The jobs of tomorrow will replace the jobs of today, what was agreed by most digital innovators at the conference, we have to look forward to finding a solution. Investors were polled at the summit and 93% said governments were not prepared for the impact of AI on jobs.